Last weekend, Willie Nelson and his Farm Aid show brought attention to the threat that fracking poses to us family farmers. They clearly struck a chord. When Pete Seeger sang, "New York deserves to be frack free!" the audience erupted in cheers. I hope Governor Cuomo is taking notes.

My family has 250 dairy cattle and 750 acres of crop and pasture land in Central New York. It's an economically viable business although, like other farmers, we've struggled this year with too much rain and not enough pollination. We certainly don't need any additional threats to our agricultural way of life. And fracking is the biggest threat of all. Our concerns are validated by studies showing serious consequences for farmers when fracking is introduced nearby. For example, in Pennsylvania, one report by animal health experts suggests that several cases of illness, death and reproductive issues in cows, horses, fish and other animals were the result of exposure to gas drilling operations. In one case, more than a dozen cows died within an hour of direct exposure to fracking fluid. Additionally troubling is that exposed animals may be entering the food system, further endangering public health.

Even so, one of the biggest challenges to studying the impacts of fracking on farming is that gas drilling corporations refuse to disclose the chemicals and mixtures they use, making it impossible to fully comprehend the entire range of contaminants being injected into the land. And it's not only the terminal use of water spiked with toxic chemicals that is dangerous. In addition to these chemicals, fracking wastewater would also contain the radioactive materials and other dangerous chemicals found deep in the Marcellus Shale.

Fracking would bring New York farms nonstop noise and air pollution without remedy, since it is exempt from key provisions of nearly every federal regulation on pollution – the Clean Air, Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water acts, the Toxics Release Inventory, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Farming already has omnipresent and inherent threats of weather, economics and other risks. Let us say no to hydrofracking (Governor Cuomo, are you listening?) so that the purity of our air, water and our farmland is not put at risk. The family farms that Farm Aid aims to support, and the food that is produced in New York that nourishes our bodies and those of our children, grandchildren, neighbors, communities and cities, must not be jeopardized by an inherently dangerous and dirty fossil fuel extraction process.

As Willie Nelson said about hydrofracking: "I'm against it. It's bad for the land, bad for the farmers, bad for the soil. It's just all-around a bad idea."